AMERICA - YOUR CONGRESS AT WORK!!!!!!
Posted on 09/15/2008 9:54:40 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK (CBS) - A new set of potential problems in Rep. Charles Rangel's financial papers has prompted the tax-writing lawmaker to decide to hire a forensic accounting expert to try to unravel the mess.
Rangel, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is already the subject of ethics committee investigations on several fronts, including unreported income and unpaid taxes on his beach house in the Dominican Republic.
Despite Republican calls for Rangel to be stripped of his Ways and Means Committee chairmanship, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CBS 2 HD it is not going to happen.
Those issues and others have led the New York Democrat to choose to hire an expert to pore over Rangel's finances over the past 20 years, and issue a report to the House ethics committee. The congressman has not yet enlisted someone for the task.
Rangel's lawyer, Lanny Davis, said the move shows Rangel "has nothing to hide and does not believe he has done anything intentionally wrong."
The accountant's report will not be reviewed by Rangel or his advisers before it is given to the committee "as quickly as possible," Davis said.
The lawmaker also promised that once the report is complete, he will publicly release his tax returns for the past 20 years.
The tax issue is particularly embarrassing for a lawmaker whose job is to guide new tax law. Rangel is resisting calls from Republicans that he should lose his committee post, among the most coveted on Capitol Hill.
As more questions have been raised about Rangel's records, his lawyers and accountants have uncovered new discrepancies in the personal financial disclosure documents that he files every year to Congress.
Every lawmaker is required to file such paperwork disclosing major assets.
Rangel said in a statement he became aware of the issues over the weekend while working with his attorneys and staff. "While over the years I delegated to my staff the completion of my annual House financial disclosure statements, I had the ultimate responsibility. I owed my colleagues and the public adherence to a higher standard of care not only as a member of Congress but even more as the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee," he said.
Among the new discrepancies:
--Rangel's papers over the past 10 years show no reference to the sale of a home he once owned on Colorado Avenue in Washington.
--The details of a property bought in Sunny Isles, Fla., are bewildering at best. The stated value changes significantly from year to year, and even page to page, from $50,000 to $100,000 all the way up to $500,000.
--Some of the entries for investment funds fluctuate strangely, suggesting that the person either didn't have accurate information or didn't fill out the paperwork correctly.
Rangel spent the past week trying to answer questions about his ethics and his finances.
He acknowledged that he owes the Internal Revenue Service about $5,000 in back taxes for unreported income from the rental of his vacation villa, and probably a smaller amount to state and city tax collectors.
The congressman acknowledged he made mistakes but said they were errors of omission and should not lead to the loss of his high position in Congress.
The home in the Dominican Republic has proven a major embarrassment to the 78-year-old Rangel, who conceded he never reported the rental income over a 20-year period, received a no-interest mortgage on the place for more than half that time and claims to have no idea what it is worth today.
The ethics committee is also investigating Rangel's rental of three rent-stabilized apartments in his home district of Harlem, as well as his use of official congressional stationery to try to find private donors for a college center named after the lawmaker.
>> This is exactly what is going to help to defeat your party in Congress on Nov. 4!
Well, genuine documented corruption such as this *should* be helpful to defeat congressional Rats.
Will the Stupid Party get on it? Will they have the spine to use it?
I’m not holding my breath. One of the reasons: there are just as many in the GOP that are corrupt to the bone. (Can you say Ted Stevens? Can you say Don Young?)
This is just the kind of corruption — on BOTH sides of the partisan aisle — that I have hope that Palin will help quash.
AMERICA - YOUR CONGRESS AT WORK!!!!!!
Where’s the bottle of Olde English 800?
It looks to me like he ate it!!! LMAO!
Courtesy of FReeper retSignman.
NOTE: His wife demanded that the hot latina babe fiddling around Rangle's Torrid Zone be deleted out of the pic......or or she would not go along with his desperate deal to call off the impending divorce. Spouses cannot testify against their husbands.
Rangle complied even though the guys on Ways and Means were salivating to see Rangle getting blanked.
The IRS reports that some tax-exempt foundations and non-profits could be major fraud machines.
Now, according to the NY Post, we know of at least three tax-exempt entities that are connected to Rangel‘s finances:
(1) The Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service (Rangel co-opted $2 million via Capitol Hill allocations, plus another $700,000 from Dept of HUD),
(2) The NY Carib News Foundation (organized financing for Rangel’s Caribbean trips),
(3) The Ann S. Kheel Charitable Trust---aids disadvantaged neighborhoods (gave $440,000 to The Charles B. Rangel Center) the largest single donation in the charitie's 4-year history. Theordore Kheel, Esq, VP of Grupo Punta Cana Operating Company, (mortgage holder on Rangel’s villa), donated $17,000 to Rangel's congressional campaigns and $52,000 to a Rangel-run political action committee since 1990, federal filings show. (Ann Kheel is his late wife).
The IRS has determined that the biggest potential for IRS fraud are tax-exempt non-profits doing deals with other tax-exempt non-profits----all posing as do-gooder "foundations" and “charities.”
There's a zillion ways tax-exempts can defraud the IRS, the FEC, and evade SEC and US banking laws. Taxpayers should demand an investigation.
Suspected tax fraud and tax law violations can be reported to IRS TOLL-FREE 1-800-829-0433 (You may remain anonymous).
"I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU GOT IN HERE IN MY PRIVATE OFFICE BUT THIS IS A PRIVATE MEETING WITH MY COLLEAGUES"
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